Sens. Charles Schumer and Bernie Sanders moan that “85 percent of all stocks owned by Americans belong to the wealthiest 10 percent of households," and that's the basis of their contradictory argument that businesses should de-emphasize their focus on shareholder returns. The senators obviously think they’re making a coherent argument in attacking the coddling of the rich by businesses, but in truth they’re unwittingly showing how baseless was their attack on stock buybacks last week.

What they don’t see simply because they’ve never had to see it, is that companies and jobs spring from abstinence. Sorry, but they most certainly do. Just once it would be fun to see a reporter or television personality ask the senators how companies and jobs materialize. How interesting it would be to witness their attempts to answer what is so elementary. Companies and jobs once again spring from parsimony; from people delaying consumption in favor of investment.

The rich, by virtue of being rich, have the most left over after fulfilling their consumptive wants and needs. Short of stuffing what’s left over after the spending under a mattress, the rich must invest it. And so they do. By the admission of Schumer and Sanders. The inconvenient truth that they can’t get around in their lame attempts at class warfare is that the rich drive nearly all economic opportunity. Without them the work options for everyone else are exceedingly few. Don’t believe me? Just read what has these two emotional puddles in a tizzy: “85 percent of all stocks owned by Americans belong to the wealthiest 10 percent of households.” Their words, not mine.

The rich own the lion’s share of publicly-traded businesses, and it’s a safe bet that they own a similarly high majority of private businesses. By extension, the rich create nearly all the jobs. The much commented on New York Times opinion piece penned by Schumer and Sanders is an acknowledgement of this truth.

Which is why it’s odd these self-proclaimed friends of the working man find fault with “corporate boardrooms” that “have become obsessed with maximizing only shareholder earnings .” Ok, even if one were to take their pivot away from fact (“85 percent of all stocks owned by Americans belong to the wealthiest 10 percent of households”) to speculation (corporate boards don’t care about workers) as a serious one, the fact remains that prudent rich people create all the businesses and work opportunities within those businesses. Since they do, it’s a wise idea for corporate boards to please them.

So while it’s none of Schumer and Sanders' business what corporate boards do (more on this at the end), unless they can prove that anything other than investment forms corporations, they shouldn’t bemoan actions meant to please investors. To paraphrase their former U.S. Senate colleague John Kerry, you can’t love jobs and hate the job creators.

Yet Schumer and Sanders spent a whole op-ed decrying pro-shareholder actions because “85 percent of all stocks owned by Americans belong to the wealthiest 10 percent of households.” They think dividends shameful since they put more money in the pockets of the “10 percent,” but since the “10 percent”own “85 percent of all stocks” it’s probably wise for them to please the 10 percent unless the senatorial duo can explain to readers how, absent investment, companies and jobs can emerge. Sorry, the investors without which the U.S. economy would be brutally recessed want returns.

Which brings us to the main complaint of the senators: that between 2008 and 2017, “466 of the S&P 500 companies spent around $4 trillion on stock buybacks.” According to Schumer and Sanders, the latter has become “an enormous problem for workers” since buybacks allegedly “don’t benefit the vast majority of Americans.” Why don’t they? Because – you guessed it - “85 percent of all stocks owned by Americans belong to the wealthiest 10 percent of households.” The senators are wrapping themselves in an endless contradiction.

They are simply because stock buybacks surely do benefit shareholders (though not for the reasons right and left think), and because they benefit shareholders they must – as a rule – benefit workers. We know this because “85 percent of all stocks owned by Americans belong to the wealthiest 10 percent of households.” That investing proves rewarding for shareholders ensures that they’ll continue to invest, thus benefitting workers whose jobs are always and everywhere an effect of investment.

So what about the buybacks? Why do the “10 percent” like them? Surely not because the buybacks boost the value of shares. The latter is a myth promoted by both sides; one that is easily disprovable. Stocks aren’t made valuable by their scarcity when it’s remembered that the value of any business is the total of all the money it’s expected to earn in the future. Buybacks can’t in and of themselves alter an existing company’s future earnings, which is what informs the value of a share. Yet shareholders still value buybacks. Why?

They do firstly because they represent information. Good information. As it stands now, “insiders” (generally those possessing quality knowledge of a corporation, knowledge that’s unknown to others) are barred from buying shares in public companies. Governments in their infinite wisdom think markets are made “unfair” by participants with an information edge, but the real truth is that this muzzling of insiders essentially blinds markets. Those who know the most aren’t able to bring information to the marketplace through their buying and selling without risking jail time.

So while “insider trading” laws are unfortunate, anti-investor, and rather hard to define, they’re somewhat mitigated by corporate buybacks. Though individual investors with insider knowledge risk prosecution for acting on privileged information, “corporations” pregnant with knowledge can’t realistically be put in jail. In short, the stock buybacks represent a useful transfer of information from insiders to the overall marketplace. If the corporation is buying, this means a lot. It means that a purchase was executed by those closest to the company in question. Talk about a vote of confidence that has the potential to cheer investors…

Notable here is that in buying shares back, corporations have the means to issue shares to employees without diluting existing shareholders through the issuance of more. Buybacks not only infuse crucial information into the share price of companies, they also enable a process whereby workers and investor interests are even more aligned as workers themselves increasingly become shareholders. The buybacks enable the information and ownership that please the all important investor.

Which is the whole point. There are once again no companies and no jobs without investment first, so contrary to the droolings of Schumer and Sanders, it’s probably wise for corporations to do everything possible to please shareholders. And so they do, thus boosting workers in the process. Schumer and Sanders are blind to their contradictions, but also to a simple truth that eludes all too many busybodies in our midst: if you don't own something, it's none of your business what the actual owners do with it.